This invention relates to tools, and more particularly to a double barreled tool suitable for extracting and inserting electrical contacts from and into an insulation body.
In certain industries such as the aircraft and automotive industries, electrical connectors of the type wherein one or more contact terminals are mounted in an insulation body are commonly employed. Such a connector is typically of the rear insertion and rear release configuration and consists of a dielectric within which are a plurality of plug-in connector terminals. In more recent years, an elastomeric environmental protection grommet, typically made of rubber, has been added to the connector in order to reduce the chance of moisture penetrating the insulator cavity. Smaller contacts and denser cavity layouts, in combination with the addition of the aforementioned grommet, have exacerbated a problem which has long plagued the industry regarding effective and efficient methods and tools for inserting and removing these electrical contacts in the field.
The current state of the art tool employed in the industry is of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,110,093, to G.S. Johnson. This type of tool generally has a plastic body serving as a handle and a tube which has a longitudinal slot. In use, the contact lead wire is slipped into the tube through the slot so that the tool may be guided along the wire into the insulator cavity in order to remove the contact. The tube may be either plastic or metal. In practice, metallic tubes are quite durable, but their sharp tips tend to damage the grommet and the dielectric, resulting in an unacceptably high connector rejection rate.
Because of the potential for connector damage, these metal tool tips are not permitted by the military services in defense-related work. Tools having plastic tubes, on the other hand, are very fragile. The nature of the connector requires that the tube walls be very thin. If more glass is added to the material for greater rigidity, the tube tends to be very brittle. If, conversely, less glass is used, the tip tends to be so soft that it squashes or overlaps upon itself, rendering it useless for performing its intended task. The upshot of all this is that the currently used tool tends to be all plastic, inexpensive, and disposable, but will in fact not withstand a reasonable cycle. Typically, only one to three extractions/insertions may be expected per tool, resulting in operator frustration, low productivity, and high cost. What is needed, then, is a simple, durable, relatively inexpensive tool for extracting/inserting electrical contacts which is easy to use and which does not damage the connector.